


Bear Witness

by Barkour



Category: Prince of Persia (Video Game 2008)
Genre: During Canon, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How do you worship?" she countered. "With gold offerings and gluttony, and dancing, I'm sure." "I don't," he said. "Worship, I mean." The thought struck her, as fierce as if he had knocked her against the rock with that gauntlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bear Witness

Elika landed soft on her toes. Dust spilled in a pale cloud from the beam, showering from beneath her feet. He landed not so soft, catching the beam by his fingertips, swinging once, then hauling himself up. The beam murmured, but held true.

Elika held her tongue. Another fertile ground cleansed, and in the warmth of the sun with the smells of fragrant grass and heated rock heavy on her, she thought perhaps it would be unkind to tease him. She rolled the smile off her lips.

He straightened, near to the cliff face rising steep and red above them. He rolled his shoulder. "Swap positions with me?" he said.

He held his hands out to her, the leather worn and sun-hot on her fingers, her palms, her wrists. She stepped out left as he stepped to his left. They swung gracefully half-out through the air, over the thin stream that wound across the rocks far below. She twisted on her heel, planted her left foot behind her right, and swung her right out. He turned with her, his fingers strong on her wrists, the tendons in his own wrists taut beneath her fingers. That ridiculous scarf twined about, sweeping her leg as it followed him. She settled on her toes, he on his heels.

He grinned at her. The sun shone at his back; the scarf hung in his eyes. His teeth were surprisingly clean for a disreputable desert thief.

"It's kinda like dancing," he said.

His hands were steady on her wrists. His thumb brushed over the pulse. His grip was gentle. She twisted her wrists and his hands fell away. The silver shine of his gauntlet flared in the sunlight.

"You dance frequently?" she said. Her wrist itched. She didn't scratch it.

He relaxed, lapsing into what she thought might be as much act as real. "Now that all depends on how you define dancing." His smile was too absurd to be a leer.

"Those poor women," she said.

She crouched and sprang to the half-rusted platform bolted to the cliff. The metal grid bit into her toes, then tremored as he landed beside her. He stood.

"I never heard any complaints." He shielded his eyes and squinted into the sun. "Which way now?"

She flicked her hand out. Her blood hummed; for a moment her vision spotted lightly at the edges; then light peeled free of her fingernails and lanced through the air, heading stark right. Elika dropped her hand to her side. The skin on her palm pricked, sensitive now to the soft breeze that stirred the air high in the canyon, and to the heat of her thigh against it. She felt the leather of his glove on her hand, still.

"I'm sure you left them speechless," she said.

"I don't think even an act of god would leave you speechless, O, Princess Elika," he said. He followed the curve of the platform to another scarred and scoured stretch of rock.

"Dancing is hardly an act of god," she said. "There is nothing divine about it."

He eyed her. "What definition are we using again?"

"Worship," she said, thinking of the tree as it had stood once, towering as if it alone held the sky above them, "is duty. It should be conducted with dignity and grace."

"Oh," he said. "See, when I say dancing, what I'm really talking about is--"

"I know very well what you were talking about," she said. She nodded. "Shall we?"

He braced one foot against the wall, then lunged forward, the claws of his gauntlet scraping along the rock, an anchor as he raced to the next platform. Elika followed, bare toes and long fingers enough to bear her across the way. The bracelet she wore on her leg danced off the bone of her ankle, jogging up her calf then settling down again.

"You must've had some fun in that temple of yours," he said. He caught her hand and steadied her on the platform. "A couple priestesses, all alone..."

"You're disgusting," she said.

He shrugged. She thought it a play, in part if not whole. Her father had talked often of the lasciviousness, the selfish and lustful thoughts and ways of the world outside the Ahura. She had believed that once, believed it still she supposed, but what her companion said next was,

"Didn't you have any festivals? Holidays? You must have cut loose every now and then."

"How do you worship?" she countered. "With gold offerings and gluttony, and _dancing_ , I'm sure."

"I don't," he said. "Worship, I mean."

The thought struck her, as fierce as if he had knocked her against the rock with that gauntlet.

"The gods haven't done much for me," he said, "and if you haven't noticed, most religions are unduly harsh on people of my particular profession, so I'm not especially concerned with the whole stick of incense, fruit of loin thing."

"You don't worship?" she said. "At all?"

"How do you worship?" he said, as if he hadn't heard. "No feasting, no dancing and no _dancing_. I'm guessing you don't waste your harvest on an altar, not in the desert."

A godless man, she thought, remembering her mother speaking of the soulless and the damned, those lost in a desert without end. He watched her, calm in his scarf and his leathers. His fingers twitched. _Where's this Ormazd?_ he'd asked her once, and she'd said--

She looked to the sun. "We pray," she said. "In the morning, when the sun rises. In the evening, when it sets." She cupped her hands before her, as she would to catch water in a stream. "We thank Ormazd for his gift. We pledge to him our lives."

She lowered her hands. He waited. The wind pulled at his scarf, dragging it across his shoulders. Who was he to ask this of her? A godless man, out of the desert. His eyes were very blue in his dark and dusty face. He had carried her when the light of Ormazd stole the strength of her legs from her.

So she said, "We light fires at night when it's dark, to remind us of Ormazd. In the day we open our windows to the sun." When her people had left, they had drawn the cloth from the windows, leaving empty homes open to the sun. They had turned from duty, turned to the desert and the godless world, but they had not forgotten.

"We do not dance," she said. "We do not make needless offerings, or sacrifice our children on gilded altars. We pray," she said again. She did not know how else to explain.

He nodded and said, "You pray. Like this?"

He cupped his hands and held them not to the sun, but to her. His fingers overlapped, the gauntleted hand cupped beneath the other. A child's mistake. A child's mistake, she thought again, that he would raise his hands as if in prayer to her.

Idolatry, her mother whispered, to false gods.

"To Ormazd," Elika said, and she held her own cupped hands to the sun.

He looked over his shoulder to the sun, then again to her. The blue of his eyes deepened in shadow. He dropped a hand, leaving just the one stretched out to her, his fingers spread.

"Come on," he said. "Let's see about dancing our way over that-a-way. If your god doesn't mind, that is."

Perhaps he was a godless thief, but his hand was steady, his back solid, the flash of his smile a sudden brightness. And after all, he had come this far with her.

He said, "You coming, princess?"

She took his hand.


End file.
